First up from the God machine this week is an eyebrow-raising column about why Americans couldn’t possibly vote for a non-believer as president.
The very idea is remarkably remote. Gallup did a poll last year and found that Americans would sooner vote for anyone other than an atheist. But far-right commentator Michael Medved devoted his weekly column to explaining why Americans are right about this, and should only consider monotheists for the presidency. To elect a non-believer to a secular office to lead a secular executive branch, Medved said, would be “bad for the country.”
After arguing that the president is the de facto head of an informal “Church of America,” and asking how a non-believer could reasonably be expected to issue a Thanksgiving proclamation, Medved argues that an atheist couldn’t beat fundamentalist Islamic terrorists.
On one level, at least, the ongoing war on terror represents a furious battle of ideas and we face devastating handicaps if we attempt to beat something with nothing. Modern secularism rejects the notion that human beings feel a deep-seated, unquenchable craving for making connections with Godliness, in its various definitions and manifestations. For Osama bin Laden and other jihadist preachers, Islam understands that yearning but “infidel” America does not.
Our enemies insist that God plays the central role in the current war and that they affirm and defend him, while we reject and ignore him. The proper response to such assertions involves the citation of our religious traditions and commitments, and the credible argument that embrace of modernity, tolerance and democracy need not lead to godless materialism. In this context, an atheist president conforms to the most hostile anti-America stereotypes of Islamic fanatics and makes it that much harder to appeal to Muslim moderates whose cooperation (or at least neutrality) we very much need. The charge that our battle amounts to a “war against Islam” seems more persuasive when an openly identified non-believer leads our side — after all, President Atheist says he believes in nothing, so it’s easy to assume that he leads a war against belief itself. A conventional adherent of Judeo-Christian faith can, on the other hand, make the case that our fight constitutes of an effort to defend our own way of life, not a war to suppress some alternative — and that way of life includes a specific sort of free-wheeling, open-minded religiosity that has blessed this nation and could also bless the nations of the Middle East.
This is probably the dumbest thing I’ve seen in print in quite some time.
The argument is so odd, I’ve read it several times and still can’t quite figure out what Medved believes. It’s preferable to placate terrorists with a fundamentalist Christian president? Atheists fill the role of waging a “war against Islam” better than theists? Believers can sell counter-terrorism as a fight for self-interest, while non-believers can’t?
I just don’t have any idea what Medved is talking about. Or, just as likely, Medved doesn’t have any idea what Medved is talking about.
Also from the God Machine this week, TV preacher Pat Robertson is making news again:
[Tuesday’s] “700 Club” featured Bernard Lewis discussing what he calls the “clash” of civilization between Christianity and Islam, and host Pat Robertson added his own commentary afterwards, repeating his claim that “Islam is not a religion” but “a political system bent on world domination.” He warned viewers that “what they’re going to do to you will be more horrible than anything you can imagine.”
Added Robertson, “To say, ‘Well, it’s a religion and you should leave religion alone,’ that’s just not the way it works.”
And finally, just as a reminder, this should be a really interesting event tomorrow night.
CNN will serve as the exclusive broadcaster of a presidential candidate forum on faith, values and other current issues at Messiah College near Harrisburg, Penn., on Sunday, April 13, at 8 p.m. (ET) CNN Election Center anchor Campbell Brown and Newsweek editor and Newsweek.com election anchor Jon Meacham will moderate what is being billed as The Compassion Forum, which will take place nine days before the Pennsylvania primary.
Organized and sponsored by Faith in Public Life, the 90-minute forum will consist of wide-ranging and probing discussions of policies related to pressing moral issues that are bridging ideological divides now more than ever, including poverty, global AIDS, climate change and human rights. It will feature Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on the same stage to talk about these topics as each candidate sits down individually with the moderators. The program will also stream live at www.CNN.com.
John McCain was invited to join the discussion alongside his Democratic rivals, but ignored the invitation.